by | Sep 27, 2022 8:47 am
LAURA GLESBY PHOTO
Jana Russo-Priestley, center, with wife Anne and father Arius.
Jana Russo-Priestly arrived at the Omni ballroom remembering the role that Dixwell Avenue Congregational United Church of Christ (UCC) has played in three generations of her family’s history — as well as in two centuries of New Haven’s.
Russo-Priestly was one of several hundred congregants, politicians, and city-wide partners to attend the 202nd anniversary gala for one of the city’s oldest Black churches on Saturday morning at the Omni hotel on Temple Street.
The gala was initially planned in honor of the Dixwell UCC’s 200th anniversary, but it had been delayed for two years due to pandemic health precautions.
Guests found their seats beneath crystal chandeliers for the long-delayed gathering, celebrating the church’s legacy of fighting for justice, from the abolition movement to the AIDS epidemic.
Lisa and William Fluker sing “Lift Every Voice And Sing.”
Russo-Priestly’s family has attended UCC since the 1940s. Congregants still tell stories about the wedding cakes her grandmother would bake, she said. Her parents got married in the church. She had her Confirmation there.
Now, Russo-Priestly is a minister herself. Dixwell “always encouraged me to stand up, speak out” on issues like LGBTQ+ rights and reproductive justice, she said. The church’s centuries-long history of progressive action lives inside of her.
Kelli Ray.
Seated a few tables away, Kelli Ray said that she first encountered UCC when the church’s senior pastor, Rev. Frederick Streets, taught her at the Yale Divinity School. “I am a nervous person,” Ray said. “Rev. Streets helped me step out of that nervousness.”
Since joining the church community as a member, Ray challenged herself to act in plays and take on leadership roles in homeless rights’ organizations. “Dixwell is so good at capturing what it means to be committed to social justice,” she said. She’s learned that “God is so much bigger.”